A large, three-bedroom semi for £69,950 catches the eye; then there’s another end-of-terrace three-bed with an immaculate garden for £87,500. And so it goes on, home after beautiful family home for less than £100,000.

Only most have been in this window for months. And some have barely had a viewing.

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Five bedrooms, games room, two en-suite bathrooms, garage and driveway parking, garden on three sides. In a village outside Doncaster

There are three more estate agents on this small cobbled town centre street. Reeds Rains has 70 listings. There’s not a run-down eyesore among them.

A report published by online property firm Zoopla last week claimed that this boom was no longer confined to London and the Home Counties — the North was seeing price rises, too.

But not in Doncaster. Here homes just don’t seem to shift. It’s the town the property market forgot.

The average property in this South Yorkshire town is worth £95,869. That’s actually lower than what they were selling for a decade ago, when the average was £96,443, according to the Land Registry.

Of course, like the rest of the country, prices did peak — in 2007 at £118,686. But following the property slump triggered by the banking crisis, they just never got going again.

Four-bedroom detached house in quiet cul-de-sac. Two en-suite bathrooms. Front garden with parking and large rear garden

For almost a year prices have threatened to start climbing, but almost every time one month records an increase, the next there is a fall.

The number of houses selling is painfully low. The latest available figures from the Land Registry, for March, show 278 were sold in this town of 302,400 people. There have been odd months when things looked like they were picking up, but it’s been more or less the same since April 2008.

By contrast, in Oxford, which has a population of 150,000, there were 778 homes sold in March.

The average time it takes to sell a property in the UK is 65 days, according to property website Rightmove. In Doncaster, it is taking an average of 91.

In a national report by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Mark Hunter, owner of estate agent Grice & Hunter, said: ‘The so-called property bubble never reached this area and this year we have not sold one property over the initial asking price.’

I pop into Reeds Rains — I’m the only customer. Lesley Harris-Newstead has worked here for nearly 12 years.

She
admits: ‘While customers might have heard that house prices in the UK
have jumped 10 per cent this year, that’s London and other big cities —
not Doncaster.

‘Houses
here are not easy to sell. They have to be priced right to stand a
chance. Often we have to explain to clients that their home isn’t worth
as much as they think because they’ve heard about what’s going on in the
rest of the country. That can offend them.’

Spacious extended five-bedroom semi in good area with front and back garden. Porch and large front room with bay window

I’d never been to Doncaster before — but it reminds me a lot of my home town of Coventry. There’s grey, block Seventies architecture typical of so many ex-industrial towns which are now trying to find their way.

But the outskirts are certainly attractive. The town is just 30 minutes by car from Sheffield and 40 minutes down the M62 from Leeds. It’s just an hour to the coast, and less than two hours by train to London.

As you drive out from the town centre you can’t avoid spotting ‘for sale’ signs on every corner. One road has four in a row. In an hour, I see only one ‘sold’ sign.

Martin and Hazel Dawson’s four-bedroom home in Beltoft — a quiet, rural hamlet 20 minutes from the town centre — has been on the market for 22 months. It has had just four viewings.

Spacious extended five-bedroom semi in good area with front and back garden. Porch and large front room with bay window

When Martin retired as managing director of an engineering inspection firm two years ago, the couple decided they wanted to move closer to the town centre. But their house has taken so long to sell they’ve already moved out and into their new home.

Their old house has a big open-plan kitchen with a breakfast bar, and three other large downstairs rooms, plus a utility room, bathroom and a conservatory looking out on long garden.

There’s no furniture left in the house. But smiling pictures of Martin and Hazel with children and grandchildren have been left hanging on the walls to at least suggest this was once a loved family home.

They originally put their home on the market for £247,500 in October 2012. It’s now on for £229,950.

In London, a four-bedroom house like this would set you back more than £1 million.

The driveway is big enough for six cars and there is a garage.

The couple have done everything they can to make their home more attractive. Every room has been redecorated.

There is a new log fire in the front room.

Martin, 60, says: ‘It was our family home for 40 years. We have such lovely memories and we want another family to enjoy it in the same way.

‘I have to come back every few days. It also needs cleaning regularly so it is ready for any viewings and I have to mow the lawn.’

On top of this they’re paying council tax and utility bills at both properties. And his insurance costs are also higher because the property is empty. Mr Dawson says: ‘At the end of the year we will have to rethink what we are going to do — this isn’t sustainable. I don’t want to rent the house because of the emotional ties, but we may have no choice.’

Doncaster was once a thriving coal mining and railway town. Now it’s trying to reinvent itself. And this is where the problem lies.

Friday morning is market day in the town centre. At 10am, the streets are bustling with people browsing in the modern Frenchgate shopping centre.

The 19th-century Doncaster Minster looks over the concrete town centre filled with cash-for-gold and betting shops.

Here is the vast derelict shell of the T. J. Hughes department store which closed down two years ago.

But this isn’t the only face of Doncaster. There’s a new-ish airport and a huge, attractive, out-of-town development set around a series of lakes. There are shops, offices, apartments, restaurants and a vast leisure centre.

In the five years to 2013, 3,820 new homes were built in Doncaster compared to just 1,280 in Oxford and 2,120 in Cambridge. So what’s the problem with Doncaster’s housing market?

Mark Hunter, whose father set up Grice & Hunter estate agents in the Seventies, says: ‘The problem is people still think of Doncaster as a poor, ugly mining town. But there is a lot going on up here now.

It’s only a matter of time before the South becomes so overcrowded, people will be forced to look elsewhere. There is incredible value to be had in this region.

‘We regularly have to reduce asking prices — most homes go for around 10 per cent under it in the end. And even with such competitive prices, even then it can take months to get a bite.’

It’s not what is missing from Doncaster, it’s who. The town is missing crucial age groups that would spark the housing market into life — namely 20-somethings who would snap up properties ideal for first-time buyers.

With no university, and the old industrial jobs gone and little to replace them, first-time buyers are leaving to find work in Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and London.

It means young families in Doncaster can’t sell because there is no one to buy their home, and, in turn, the older couples, such as the Dawsons, who want to sell larger family homes, haven’t got anyone to buy their homes.

With no demand from young people, it also means that buy-to-let landlords — who have kept the market bubbling along in many regions — aren’t buying homes either.

This may not seem relevant to the housing boom cities such as London and those where prices are also starting to climb.

Because of demand in these regions, across the UK loans to first-time buyers are going up — 26,800 were taken out in May compared with 15,800 at the start of 2013, according to figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

These buyers are borrowing more. The average advance has risen from £107,088 to £123,200. And the total income of buyers has increased from £34,000 to £37,000. But there are signs this may be about to come to an end because first-time buyers have started to struggle.

A report by the National Association of Estate Agents recently found that just 3 per cent of buyers were first-timers.

Its surveys can be ahead of the figures being reported by mortgage companies such as Halifax and Nationwide, and official data from the Land Registry.

David Hollingworth, director of London & Country, says: ‘First-time buyers are absolutely vital to the health of the housing market — they’re the ones who kick-start the rest of the chain. When things don’t get moving at the bottom, it stops everything at the top.’

Doncaster may seem an isolated case — but its plight is a possible warning sign of things to come for the rest of the UK.

v.bischoff@dailymail.co.uk

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